Greensburg Tribune-Review Feb. 8, 1997
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Danzig Strays From Familiar Hard-Rock Sound
By Michael A. Capozzoli Jr.
Glenn Danzig has been able to maintain a career as a hard-rock
artist the past 20 years.
In the late 70s, Danzig led his punk-rock group the Misfits.
In the mid-'80s, when he fronted Samhain, a less punk-oriented
and more heavy-metal outfit, Danzig began to make his mark within
the hard-rock genre. When that scene began to fade in the early
90s, Danzig had long since moved onto megaproducer Rick Rubin's
American Records label.
There Danzig found a relatively safe haven to create music.
While other heavy metal artists went into oblivion. As far as
concert ticket and album sales, Danzig, through new albums and
constant touring around the world, was able to maintain a strong
global fan base.
Yet Danzig's days at American were not always productive for
the label's sales department.
"At American," Danzig said, "if you don't do the kind of
record they want, they're not going to push it. I wanted to leave
the label because American is falling apart. There is no
leadership there. Anyway, I left and now I'm with Hollywood
records."
The 40-year-old Danzig's Hollywood debut, "Blackacidevil," is
a serious departure from the artist's previous recording
ventures. The music on "Blackacidevil" is more technology
oriented than any of Danzig's other albums. There's almost no
shred of the hard rock/punk/metal sounds that Danzig based his
career on.
"What's funny is people who have heard the music completely
ignore the techno element that's in there." Danzig said. "People
think we're metal, but we were never accepted by that crowd. I
set up my music so that it's for everybody. Those who can tap
into it do, and the people that don't, probably shouldn't be
listening anyway. I make records that I think are great and
anything that comes afterwards is just icing on the cake."
One of the more interesting tracks on the album is a cover of
the Black Sabbath tune, "Hand of Doom."
Danzig has recorded the song differently from the original and
he believes his interpretation came across well on the album.
"My attitude is that if you're going to do a cover song," he
said, "it shouldn't be a cover. I should be making a new song. It
should be exciting and it should be new. There should be some
reason why you're doing this song and bringing a new element to
it."
On the album, he calls it "Hand of Doom - Version."
"This way everybody knows I'm not covering it per se. I'm
doing my own version of it. The lyrics are different and Jerry
Cantrell (from Alice in Chains) came down to play guitar on the
three songs and that was one of them."
Danzig has started his own comic book company, Verotik, which
publishes such titles as "Venus Domina," "Verotika" and "Igrat."
"Two years ago," he said, "I decided to start a comic book
company. I wanted the stories to be for adults - mature-themed
comics in full color because nobody does them here in North
America. America's comic book industry is very infantile and it
gets smaller and smaller every year. It implodes. There's no
reason for it. Comics are a great medium for pictures and words.
We approach it a little differently at my company. We picked out
the best writers and artists and came out with computer-colored,
gorgeous books."